English

Particle polarization, spin tensor and the Wigner distribution in relativistic systems

Nuclear Theory 2021-08-04 v2 High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

Particle spin polarization is known to be linked both to rotation (angular momentum) and magnetization of a many particle system. However, in the most common formulation of relativistic kinetic theory, the spin degrees of freedom appear only as degeneracy factors multiplying phase-space distributions. Thus, it is important to develop theoretical tools that allow to make predictions regarding the spin polarization of particles, which can be directly confronted with experimental data. Herein, we discuss a link between the relativistic spin tensor and particle spin polarization, and elucidate the connections between the Wigner function and average polarization. Our results may be useful for theoretical interpretation of heavy-ion data on spin polarization of the produced hadrons.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2007.04029,
  title  = {Particle polarization, spin tensor and the Wigner distribution in relativistic systems},
  author = {Leonardo Tinti and Wojciech Florkowski},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2007.04029},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

30 pages, no figures, book chapter submitted to "Strongly Interacting Matter Under Rotation", edited by F. Becattini, J. Liao and M. Lisa

R2 v1 2026-06-23T16:56:49.438Z